CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. ? It looks like the space shuttle Atlantis
now has its own groupies. More than 150 Twittering space fans gathered at
NASA's Kennedy Space Center here on Friday to watch Atlantis' final voyage.

It was NASA's second launch "tweetup," a meeting
for NASA fans on the microblogging site Twitter. The attendants came from 30
states, including Alaska, and places as far away as England, the Netherlands,
and Puerto Rico.

"This is definitely a dream come true," said
Sultana Ali, of Orlando, Fla., of the chance to watch a shuttle
launch in person. "I've died and gone to
space nerd heaven," she tweeted later under the name @globalsultana.

Many space fans also plan to
attend the science fiction Nebula Awards, which are being presented this
weekend in nearby Cocoa Beach. The organizers scheduled the awards for Thursday
through Sunday to coincide with the STS-132 shuttle launch.

Atlantis is slated to blast off Friday at 2:20 p.m. EDT
(1820 GMT) from the seaside launch pad here. The countdown is on track and the
weather is expected to cooperate. In addition to the tweeps, NASA is
expecting 39,000 guests at the space center to view the launch.

"I hope I can feel the ground move and the hairs on my
arm stand up," said Mauria Ellenson of Minneapolis, Minn., predicting what
it might feel like at the moment of liftoff. "The experience is a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

More than 1,000 people applied for the roughly 150 spots
available at the tweetup.

"Here at NASA, we think we have some pretty spectacular
things to communicate with the public," NASA spokesman Mike Curie told SPACE.com.
"In the modern era of social media we have the opportunity for direct
communication. We're finding there's great interest in what NASA is
doing."

The lucky attendees will be watching the launch from a spot
at Kennedy Space Center near the historic countdown clock. The group arrived on
Thursday and had the chance to meet astronauts
and NASA officials. They also took a behind-the-scenes tour of the launch
complex.

Many tweeps said they feel especially fortunate to be
viewing one of the last three planned shuttle launches ever, and the final
scheduled flight of Atlantis.

"I've wanted to see a launch since I was a kid," said
Jonathan Smith of Lafayette, Ind. "When I heard it was retiring, I
thought, 'I've got to get here.'"

SPACE.com is providing complete coverage of Atlantis'
STS-132 mission to the International Space Station with Senior Writer Clara Moskowitz
in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and Managing Editor Tariq Malik based in New York. Click here for shuttle
mission updates and a link to NASA TV.